Philip Glass concerto among works in concert Feb. 11 at Mechanics Hall

Monday

Feb 12, 2018 at 3:00 AM

By Richard Duckett Telegram & Gazette

WORCESTER — So far pianist Simone Dinnerstein has given seven public concert performances of contemporary classical composer Philip Glass' new Piano Concerto No. 3, a work he wrote for her.

The concerto received its world premiere in a concert with Dinnerstein and the self-conducted Boston chamber music orchestra A Far Cry on Sept. 22 at Jordan Hall in Boston, and she has since performed it two more times with the ensemble and four other orchestras who co-commissioned the piece.

Dinnerstein and A Far Cry rejoin to play the work as part of a program on Feb. 11 at 4 p.m. in Mechanics Hall presented by Music Worcester Inc.

However, this won't be the first time they have performed Glass' new concerto for piano and strings in Mechanics Hall. The pianist and ensemble recorded the work there in September, along with J.S. Bach's Keyboard Concerto in G minor. "It was great. It's such a beautiful acoustic in there, and such a beautiful piano," Dinnerstein recalled. The recording will be released later this year.

The Feb. 11 concert will also include Bach's Keyboard Concerto as well as his Brandenberg Concerto No. 3 and Prokofiev's Visions Fugitives.

A Far Cry, an acclaimed collective of 17 to 18 musicians that was founded in 2007, has recorded and performed before in Mechanics Hall.

Dinnerstein, meanwhile, has become a regular visitor to Worcester with performances in Tuckerman Hall and Mechanics Hall. Last June she came to Mechanics Hall with the Havana Lyceum Orchestra to celebrate its "Mozart in Havana" album as part of a nine-city U.S. tour.

"Last year the audience at Mechanics Hall was really terrific," Dinnerstein said during a recent telephone interview. She said she was was told that 50 percent of the audience for the concert were Music Worcester newcomers. During their visit, Dinnerstein and orchestra members stayed with families in Worcester. "So it was really a warm welcome by the entire community."

Dinnerstein, who is from Brooklyn, NY, won a warm following after taking a chance and financing and recording her own interpretation of Bach's Goldberg Variations in 2005. Just over two years later, after some shopping around, the album was released by Telarc International and would go on to receive tremendous reviews ("an utterly distinctive voice," said The New York Times), awards and sales. Dinnerstein's career as a recording and performing artist was launched and she has remained in great demand.

Glass, who grew up in Baltimore and turned 81 on Jan. 31, has had a great impact on music through his operas, symphonies, compositions for his own ensemble (Glass is also a pianist), and his wide-ranging collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen to David Bowie.

The Glass-Dinnerstein collaboration came about after Glass invited Dinnerstein to his home for breakfast. As they talked about the possibility of Glass writing a piece for her, Dinnerstein said, she suggested "a piano concerto for string orchestra and paired with a specific Bach concerto (keyboard)." There really haven't been many concertos for that combination since Bach's time, Dinnerstein said.

Glass subsequently sent her the first movement, but she didn't receive anything else (the work has three movements) until last July.

"Then I went and played it for him. He made changes to it based on what he had heard. In all the times I've commissioned pieces of music I've hardly ever made suggestions to a composer. I wouldn't want to interfere with the process," she said.

The verdict?

"I'm completely besotted by it," Dinnerstein said. "I think it's an incredibly beautiful and perfect piece of music. Far beyond anything I could ever have hoped for. I think it's a major work. I've performed it seven times, and every time you get to the end of the piece, there's this quiet that has taken over the entire audience, which is really unusual."

Furthermore, "I think he was extremely sensitive in how he wrote it for me," Dinnerstein said. "When I first started to learn it, (I thought) 'Wow, this is quite a coincidence, this seems to fit me so much.' He said, 'Well, I wrote it for you.' I thought that was incredibly sweet. You don't think of having a piece of music tailor-made for you. I feel very honored."

As a practical matter, "I had to figure out how to make it work, practically speaking," Dinnerstein said. She arranged a consortium of 12 orchestras, each of which contributed to the commission and have performed or will perform the concerto with Dinnerstein. "It's a nice way to bring this music to a broad spectrum of orchestras," she said. The work will also be performed in Europe, including a performance with the London Symphony Orchestra.

The verdict from the critics so far has been positive. The concerto was called "beguiling" by The Boston Globe after its world premiere.

"This was a marvelous performance of a marvelous new work," said the New York Classical Review following the third performance by Dinnerstein and A Far Cry at Columbia University Sept. 28.

"They're fantastic to play with," Dinnerstein said of A Far Cry. "Every member of A Far Cry is an active participant. Working with them on this was the best way to start learning the concerto. I'm really excited to play it with them again."